Jeffrey Kofman

Jeffrey Kofman is a London-based correspondent for ABC News. He reports from around the globe from the U.K. and Europe to the Middle East and Africa for ABC News broadcasts and platforms, including World News with Diane Sawyer, Nightline and Good Morning America. Prior to his assignment overseas, Kofman was based out of Miami, covering Florida, the Caribbean and Latin America.

From the Chilean mine catastrophe to the US invasion of Iraq to the BP oil spill and Hurricane Katrina, Kofman has reported from the scene of some of the great events that shaped the last 30 years.

Since joining ABC News in January 2001, Kofman has traveled extensively to report on developing stories and political events in Florida and the southeast and more than 20 countries in the Western Hemisphere. He has traveled extensively through some of the most remote regions of South and Central America. He has covered every major hurricane of the last decade and reported from New Orleans before, during and after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2006. His work covering instability in developing countries has given him unique insights into the challenges of establishing stable democracies in third world nations.

Kofman's work for ABC News has been recognized with an Edward R. Murrow Award, a DuPont Award, and a special Emmy Award for ABC's coverage of the attacks on September 11, 2001.

Kofman came to ABC News from CBS News, where he was a correspondent in the network's New York Bureau. At CBS he reported for the CBS Evening News and Sunday Morning, covering stories from Moscow, London and across the U.S. Before joining CBS, he was a correspondent at CBC National News in Toronto.

During his 11 years at the CBC, Kofman was host of an award-winning weekly current affairs program, anchor of the CBC's Toronto newscast, a network radio host, and sub-anchor for the CBC's flagship nightly network newscast, The National. He has won several major Canadian journalism awards, including the National Media Human Rights Award for a ground-breaking 1987 CBC documentary on AIDS discrimination. He began his television career at Global Television News in Toronto in 1982.

Kofman speaks French and Spanish. Born in Toronto, he is a graduate of Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, where he studied political science.

• THE ARAB SPRING UP CLOSE

  As the Arab Spring swept through North Africa in 2011, Jeffrey Kofman, ABC News Foreign Correspondent, was on the frontlines. Dispatched from London to cover events as they unfolded when Libyans rose up to overthrow Muammar Gadhafi's 42-year regime, Jeffrey reported on the revolution from the inside. As the revolution spread he travelled the country over the next seven months, in five separate trips, to report from areas in rebel control. He was in Tripoli the day Gadhafi's regime fell, and he was there again when Gadhafi was captured and killed. He even saw the grisly display of Gadhafi's body in a meat locker in the city of Misrata. Jeffrey has deep insights into the challenges Libya and other Arab nations face as they now struggle to create representative governments in regions that have only known dictatorship and absolute monarchy. Can countries with no history of openness remake themselves into democracies? Or, will they slide into another form of dictatorship? Can an "Islamic Democracy" really work? What is the role of women in a region where they have traditionally been treated as second-class? The revolutions in North Africa have been tough, but anyone close to the region knows the hard part lies ahead.

  While Jeffrey reports in front of the camera, he has always had a passion for photography, capturing the reality of events as they unfold around him; the impact on everyday citizens; and the often extraordinarily difficult and dangerous circumstances journalists work in. His lectures are illustrated with dozens of these engaging images.

• CRISIS IN THE HEADLINES: LESSONS IN LEADERSHIP FROM THE FRONT PAGES

  In his 30 years in journalism Jeffrey has reported on many of the most important stories of our times. Since joining ABC News in 2001, he has been a witness to a staggering number of front page stories. In reporting on so many of these events, Jeffrey has developed his own assessment of leadership confronting crisis. Using examples from catastrophic events that have transfixed the world, Jeffrey identifies key actions taken, and not taken, by those who are entrusted to lead others.

  HURRICANE KATRINA AND HAITI: Jeffrey reported from New Orleans before, during and after Hurricane Katrina devastated the legendary city. He watched the complete failure of leadership at local, state and federal levels which left people to die, wasted billions of dollars, and squandered what could have been an extraordinary opportunity to make the city better. Jeffrey saw a similar pattern repeated during the leaderless response to the Haiti earthquake in 2010.

  COLOMBIA: In 2002, Jeffrey went to Bogota, Colombia to profile Presidential candidate Alvaro Uribe. At the time, paralyzed by drug-trafficking guerrillas, Colombia was one of the world's failed states. Yet over the next eight years, Uribe demonstrated a single-minded focus on reclaiming guerrilla territories and crushing the guerrilla leadership. Jeffrey met with Uribe several times and traveled with him in the Presidential plane to remote jungle regions struggling to re-establish order. He also travelled by helicopter into remote drug-producing areas with the Colombian army as they blew up drug labs. It is largely because of Uribe's uncompromising, and sometimes controversial, leadership that Colombia has been transformed from failed state to economic tiger in just a decade.

  CHILE: In 2010, Jeffrey covered two major stories in Chile. He first sampled Chile's unique brand of leadership in February of that year when he arrived in Santiago 36 hours after the earthquake hit and saw repair crews hard at work, roads already being repaved and crisis teams in control. Six months later he returned to Chile as the first overseas reporter to arrive at the remote site where 33 miners had been discovered alive, deep under the Atacama Desert. Jeffrey spent most of the next seven weeks reporting on one of the most extraordinary stories of our times. He saw first-hand how decisive, transparent and informed leadership fused to create an outcome that uplifted the world and rebranded Chile as "the little country that could."

  LIBYA: The aerial bombing campaign, hastily cobbled together by the U.S., France, the U.K. and NATO Allies in March 2010, was a hurried response to dictator Muammar Gadhafi's threat to slaughter thousands of rebels controlling Eastern Libya. Obama, Sarkozy and Cameron left themselves vulnerable to criticisms that they had "bought" a war with "no exit strategy." Yet, as events unfolded, the decision to empower Libyan rebels on the ground turned out to be a master-stroke. Jeffrey reported extensively from Iraq after the U.S. "liberated" that country, as "liberation" morphed into "occupation." As Jeffrey saw up close in Libya, the restrained leadership of NATO in Libya left it to Libyans to win their victory, giving them a true sense of ownership and giving their revolution legitimacy. This does not guarantee a better future, but it gives Libyans a better shot at it.

  THE GULF OIL SPILL: Twelve hours after the drill rig "Deepwater Horizon" exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, Jeffrey landed in New Orleans to report on the story. For the next four months he was ABC's lead correspondent in the Gulf, reporting on the rig's sinking; the expanding oil leak; and the devastating economic, social and environmental consequences of the spill. He was also the first reporter to interview BP President Tony Hayward; the first reporter to fly out to the recovery scene; and months later, he was the first to report that the oil spill was not, in the short-term at least, having the catastrophic environmental impact that had been so feared. What Jeffrey witnessed was an extraordinary effort by BP to make amends, by spending billions of dollars on clean up and compensation. But the company's utterly inept handling of communications, from Tony Hayward's inability to articulate empathy ("I want my life back!") to the corporate media advisors' hostility to the press, meant that despite their largesse they only got blame.

  While Jeffrey reports in front of the camera, he has always had a passion for photography, capturing the reality of events as they unfold around him; the impact on everyday citizens; and the often extraordinarily difficult and dangerous circumstances journalists work in. His lectures are illustrated with dozens of these engaging images.

• RESILIENCE IN A CHAOTIC WORLD

  Jeffrey delivers a message of hope to a world that is so frequently in despair. "I see the strength of the human spirit in the hell holes of the world," says Jeffrey, and he encourages others to do the same. Reminding audiences that just a few decades ago over 20 South American countries were dictatorships and today, only one remains so, Jeffrey discusses the strength of people to unite, to challenge oppression, and to bring more - not less - freedom into the world. He talks of Colombia, once riven by terrorist bombs and brutal guerillas; of Chile, where just 40 years ago the country was terrorized by dictator Augusto Pinochet; and of Libya where the a ragtag assembly of teachers, technicians and tradesmen with no military experience mounted a rebel force that ultimately toppled the brutal Gadhafi dictatorship. Even in places that do not seem to get better, such as Haiti and so much of Africa, Kofman has seen a resilience that humbles our notions of endurance and hardship.

  While Jeffrey reports in front of the camera, he has always had a passion for photography, capturing the reality of events as they unfold around him; the impact on everyday citizens; and the often extraordinarily difficult and dangerous circumstances journalists work in. His lectures are illustrated with dozens of these engaging images.